Day 8 Petropavlovsk, Russia

Today was a pretty good day. It was my first trip to Russia and was very interesting. To begin with it took an exceptionally long time to get cleared by the Russian authorities….. even had a face to face Passport check. Once we finally tendered ashore we headed to the Pacific Network Country Resort complex where dogs are trained to pull dog sleds. The sled you see in the picture has wheels which is used when they don't have snow for training. It was very pretty there since it had just snowed (now I have snow….). The snow was very unusual since September is their warm month.(that's why they are still using wheels on the sled) It rained on and off with beautiful periods of sun. This area is referred to as the “land of Fire and Ice”. The Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia has something like 150 volcanoes (Fire) and of course you can figure out the ice part. The Koryak dance by the indigenous people was very good as was the lunch. I especially like the grilled fresh salmon… Due to the inclement weather our nature walks in the woods was canned, good thing to because I felt like I had frostbite on my toes. Walking in the snow wasn’t bad at all and it wasn’t really wasn’t all that cold. The problem was the slush that was created by all the people and our buses. Once my feet got wet I was screwed. It didn’t keep me back; I still kept looking for some great photo ops. All in all it was a very nice day. I really enjoyed it. Tomorrow, I believe we head south and hopefully to warmer climates….yeah! Obviously I was wrong about not being able to visit Petropavlovsk and I’m very happy about that. Not only was my visit to Russia great it was also nice to get off the ship and getting active for a day. I hope I’ll see some sun (without the wind) tomorrow on our way to Aomori Japan…